Thursday, September 2, 2010

[alt: Normally, the Shuttle can't quite safely reach the orbital inclination required to pass over both those points from a Canaveral launch, but this is an alternate history in which either it launches from Vandenberg or everyone hates the Outer Banks.]

Oddly, our second space-exploration comic in a row. Also, our second post-punchline-dialog comic in a row (unless you think "Dammit Frank" is a hilarious punchline. which it is not.)

While we all know that xkcd is not a political comic and doesn't like to talk about politics in its installments, we also know that this rule is frequently broken because, hey, Randall is out of other ideas! And you can only hit "random" on wikipedia so many times before you are just repeating articles you've already seen.

Anyway, this comic is of course calling attention to the mideast peace talks going on in Washington right now, given that one of the biggest discussions in the talks is over the future of the land in the West Bank and the people in it. And the fact that lots of people disagree, and strongly, about what should happen with it.

What I don't get is why this comic chose to portray that debate - which, like all serious debate, is ripe for comedy - in the form of NASA employees, because that makes no sense. OH WAIT yes I do, it's because the author used to be a NASA employee and wants to make sure we all know it! (i understand that some of you will argue: he isn't trying to brag to us about his former job! he never mentions it anywhere on here! to you people I say: read the goddamn alt text).

Anyway, good satire is a wonderful thing, but the point is to take a situation is society, in this case the israeli/palestinian conflict, and say something about it. Satire is a way of making a point about the issue at hand. The Daily is funny because it points out when people are being hypocrites. The Onion is funny because (among other reasons) it points out how most media is obsessed with trivialities. They're points you could make straightforwardly, but it's not as powerful.

So what point does this comic make? None - just that there is a debate and that someone wants to redirect a shuttle because of it. And that even then a guy named frank hates oklahoma. Is Randall trying to draw a parallel between the two locations? If so, I'd like to know why. I don't see any reason why one is meaningfully like the other. More basically, what is the point he is trying to make?

I don't, of course, think there is such a point. I think he just wanted to do a throwaway gag about how people get mad over the mideast, and hey! what's up with that??

From a technical standpoint, the punchline of this comic is really "I've redirected the flight..." because that is the outrageous and disproportionate response to the argument. The line about "north texas" is not 100% worthless though, but putting it afterwards saps energy from the real punchline. Perfect solution: Make it the alt-text. And delete "damn it, frank." Bonus: you can get rid of that shitty alt-text the comic has now!

88 comments:

I don't think this is an attempt at satire. It's observational humor. The off-panel employees (off to the left and right respective to their political positions, as you probably noticed but didn't bring up) are arguing about the name of this area. Randall, taking the position of the sane bystander in the middle (or superior, depending on basic assumptions about his nature) isn't taking a stance on the debate itself; he just wants to say that arguing about names is annoying, tiresome, and tangential. The satellite setting makes sense, because that's the sort of place where one would get into a situation like this and where having a single name per location would be most important. There is no real political point, like you said, but he didn't want to make one. He's just making a joke.

Carl, while most posts I've read by you are very accurate in determining A) The point of the comic and B) Why the point of the comic is stupid, I think you missed (A) on this one. As Stephen said, it's more to say that arguing over names is stupid (in particular when all names involved point to one and only one area, so everyone knows what the point is).

The other characters are starting an argument over what name to use when referring to 32.0 N 35.5 E. So, the center character decides to circumvent argument by changing the Check-In location to a less debatable area - Oklahoma is pretty well known as Oklahoma.

The punch line, then, is the other guy saying "You mean Occupied North Texas?" That's absurd. There is no disagreement over what Oklahoma should be referred to. I don't know the history of Oklahoma, so I assume that at one point it was a part of Texas, but at it's current time it is Oklahoma and arguing over it's name is trivial. And that's the "joke", not that the guy was adjusting the flight to avoid confrontation.

By comparing a contemporary controversial issue to a trivial piece of history it's almost like he's trying to say that people should get over the geographical past, that we're in the present now and maybe the Palestinians should get over it 'cos it's Jew Land now. I want to believe that he really did intend that because it would make this both the boldest and stupidest comic he ever did.

xkcdexplained is much closer to the mark here. The joke is that some people (nerds) will find a way to argue over seemingly uncontroversial territory names with the same fervor as others argue over the middle east. "There's always someone; am I right folks?" is not a great joke, but it's okay. And the dialogue in this fairly natural for xkcd (read: passable).

The latest comic is one of the most awful attempts at humour I have ever seen. Imagine someone explaining this joke to you in person

"And then, instead of the poem continuing as normal, she pulls Death out of the carriage and rides away! And then there's a HILARIOUS caption that says Grand Theft Auto... wait for it!.... EMILY DICKINSON EDITION!"

I believe you may have missed this one. This one is making a comment not on nerds or semantics, its making a comment on the kind of people who argue over the middle east when they have no personal vested interest of whether its called one name or another. The commentator is those people are just argumentative and will argue over things anyway. The punchline (You mean occupied north texas) points out this observation in an intended humorous fashion.

You were right about the middle non confrontational guy. He is just trying to avoid an argument, but the man in the middle here is moving the check-in time, not something as ridiculous as the flight path of the shuttle.

Also, the lines "goddammit frank" serve a function. They are the stick figures facial expression. Randall doesn't draw anything more complex than lines, flow charts, graphs and stick figures (except very rare occasions). The speech line replaces the facial expression by both showing the expression is in response to the line "you mean occupied north texas" and not giving away the characters emotional state before you reach the point that aforementioned punchline is stated.

So, the "goddammit frank" line does serve a function. But it could go without it. would it be funnier? Maybe.

787: Randall, once again, fucks things up by making a comic about a minor issue when a very-similar much more major issue is currently head of the news, this making everyone mistake the joke.

788: Its... its not even remotely witty. It combines "a game about car stealing" with "Emily Dickinson" to produce... stealing Death's car. That's the joke.It might maybe have been more witty if the name of the game wasn't literally "car stealing".

As someone /from/ Oklahoma, I can confidently assert that the comic is hilarious because anyone who knows a Texan, knows that Texans like to joke around that Texas is its own country. And that Oklahoma is just the "northern territory of Texas."

All the Texans I showed this to found it immediately hilarious. All the people who know Texans found this immediately hilarious. Granted, people who know Texans or are Texans may not be the majority of the population in the world but just admit that it's funny for some people.

Sounds more to me like the author of these articles is growing stale and running out of ideas as to how to bash someone else. He's even taken to imagining various phrases and smug thoughts Randall might have, which is completely unsubstantiated regardless of the subject. That's not good criticism, that's just malice.

Eh, 788 is a mediocre joke, but we've seen worse. The biggest problem is that there's no link whatsoever between "Grand Theft Auto" and "Emily Dickinson" -- it was probably funny in Randall's mind, but in practice, it's very artificial. But again, we've seen worse, and this doesn't qualify as one of Randall's worst in my opinion. It's just mediocre.

And gotta say, carl did totally miss the mark on this one. The punchline was not at all that he redirected the flight, which would be really weak, but instead, as other people have mentioned, that an area so non-controversial could still be argued about. Also, removing the "dammit frank" would make for incredibly awkward dialogue (which is actually pretty normal in this comic.)

I'm with Andrew R. and Anon 5:12 on this one. I think Carl's suggested changes would actually make the comic less funny (even if it's not that funny already), since the North Texas thing really is the punchline here.

And I think removing the PPD here would also hurt, since without the idea that there is a specific person to blame that comment on, we miss the point of "There's always that one guy, eh?" and might take Frank's line as a serious politically-motivated belief being stated. With that line, we know that Frank is arguing just to be argumentative.

This is one of the better ones of late, post-punchline aside. Indeed, I could probably have come to that conclusion without even reading the comic, because the criticism is transparently crap. Put it this way, criticism of xkcd usually writes itself, so if the criticism is tortured you know that it's being forced.

If you read the forums, you'd realize the alt-text was important. If Randall does anything inaccurate, people tend to assume it is a mistake, and whine about in on the forums so they can feel smarter then the god of pop-nerd culture. So it's basically him saying to the hard-core xkcd users: "Yes, it's factually inaccurate. It's also a WEBCOMIC, so get over it." Ryan North has had to do similar things in dinosaur comics, which features talking dinosaurs, so...

I normally love reading these updates because generally I agree with Carl... but what the hell man? How did you so blatantly miss the point of the comic? It kinda makes you look like an absolute idiot.

Perhaps it is to show a man removed from his element- a NASA employee, rooted firmly in the ways of science, is caught up in the crossfire of a verbal conflict of a political nature. This is visually represented by the disappearance of the background- gone are the graph machines and radar readouts that he is so comfortable with, that perhaps he prefers over human contact.

What does he do? Does he try to join the conversation? Become a mediator, or even a middle ground of the debate? No, the character, desperate to return to his environment like a sea bass stuck above ground, he simply takes the option that returns him to what he is familiar with as soon as possible. He does not bother to tell his co-workers how needlessly petty they are being, or that they are obstructing the mission, or even that they should get back to work- he crumples to their bickering in a moment of shameful yet familiar conversational cowardice, a recurring theme in the awkward narrative of the life of Randall Munroe.

But why did Munroe choose to make this comic? Perhaps to (hypocritically) point out the folly of arguing semantics. Perhaps because he believes that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will obstruct NASA efforts in the Middle East. (http://www.america.gov/st/scitech-english/2010/February/20100216152157kcsniggih0.849209.html)

788: Fucking retarded pop culture mashup so terrible it makes the crap Family Guy spews out look subtle and clever is fucking retarded.

randy gets a tiny bit of credit for at least acknowledging the inspiration for one of his comics. Next step is to admit it when he blatantly rips something off (instead of just making a shittier joke with the same subject).

Picking out just these few lines from one of Emily Dickinson's many poems, and showing one in-game action to (weakly) reference it really doesn't feel like enough to extrapolate this game idea in my head.

I'm not too familiar with her work as a whole, so hey, maybe Randall has a better understanding of the overarching themes of her work, and how of course once you start thinking of it, you can imagine a whole sandbox world in an Emily Dickinson theme, where hijacking Death's carriage is just one hilariously fitting thing that happens. ...but I seriously doubt that. It just seems disconnected and stupid.

I tried to think of something equally stupid as an analogy, and it was surprisingly hard. I came up with River City Ransom: Ernest Hemingway edition! Because one of the restaurants you can go buy food and drink items in is a clean, well-lighted place!

Oh wow, I viewed it without the last panel and it was actually good! You'd have to find a way to make the Y-button more noticeable, but if you did so, the joke becomes easy to see, and not so clumsily done

I think Randall has been playing Red Dead Redemption. The presence of carriages reminded him of the Emily Dickinson poem, so he made this comic. Why do I think this? Because he wrote fucking GRAND THEFT AUTO EMILY DICKINSON EDITION on it. When I saw that I was like, "Not only is this dude making a joke about Emily Dickinson, he's also, in a way, implying that Red Dead Redemption might as well be called Grand Theft Auto Old West Edition."

Can you imagine such a mashup? It is inherently hilarious, and I am proud to have witnessed it. Undoubtedly the merging of one aspect of nerd culture (knowledge [Dickinson]) and another (videogames [GTA]) has finally won you haters over.

Why does Randall think that it is enough just to place things next to each other?

Think of it like playing with Action Figures. You have G.I. Joe, you have your dino damage velocoraptor (The most hilarious dinosaur)

You don't just place them next to each other on the shelf and go HA. LOOK AT THEM. What a WACKY JUXTAPOSITION.

You have them go on adventures! Have them fly through space and beat up Legos! YOU MASH THEM UP!

Randall doesn't do this! He apparently is the type of nerd to keep things in their original packaging. He doesn't play, he doesn't explore possibilities. His imagination is dried up rancid.

Emily Dickinson politely telling a carriage drive to fuck off. Death coming for Emily and Emily showing up in a tank, pushing buttons on her cell phone and muttering something about 'cheat codes'. A joke about the absurd nature of video game inventories with "The carriage held but both ourselves and two pistols, a rocket launcher, an AK, and several hundred rounds" NONE OF THESE IDEAS ARE VERY GOOD. But they took me no time to come up with, and they are scores better than what Randall did.

And Achewood represents the antithesis of XKCD. The drawing is subtle, understated, and highly detailed.

The characters are some of the BEST ever created. Honestly, the amount of characterization in Roast Beef beats out the entirety of most long running sitcoms. You KNOW the man. He is different from anybody you have ever met, but you know who he is and when he says something, you know that is EXACTLY what he would say.

The storylines are rich, inventive, and like nothing else. The Great Outdoor Fight was an epic that can't be rivaled.

Now take XKCD, who has (maybe) two characters, one of whom can't be defined except that he liked bakeries twice, and the other of whom has lost his spark. The story lines are dull and messy, and never succeed in telling something that makes sense. The art is. Well. Stick figures. but we knew that.

Most importantly, Achewood never panders. Onstad is doing it for himself and because this is what he wants and that is all. He has never cared about those who dislike his work and doesn't strive to convert him. Meanwhile, XKCD just names things we recognize.

And Randall has the balls to act like they're old drinking buddies? I wanted to strangle him.

And, because I realize that I've been typing way too much about stuff nobody cares about, I share with you one of my favorite Achewoods:

I thought the latest goatkcd was pretty good. In the end, not only the Death gets a full view of an outstretched asshole, but it is also revealed that Emily Dickinson has an actual dick! Lots of laughs all around!

The last panel pisses me off tremendously because it's such a piss-poor example of doing a mashup. He could've at least tried to make it sound like an actual GTA game. And GTA games don't have 'editions'. There's no Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Edition or Grand Theft Auto: Nico Bellic Edition. Those games just don't work that way. The fact that he has to invent something that's TOTALLY DIFFERENT THAN THE GAME in order to cram Emily Dickinson in the game was one of the many clues to Randall why this was a bad idea.

But he doesn't take clues. He considers putting two unrelated things next to each other enough of a joke, and doesn't do a single thing to try and tie them together.

I was surprised the alt text for this one wasn't "Cue letters from engineering majors complaining that the Shuttle can't quite safely reach the orbital inclination required to pass over both those points from a Canaveral launch. They get to write letters like that because when you're not getting a life you have a lot of free time." or something like that.

September 4, 2010 11:12 AM Anonymous said... an unusual amount of cuddlefish in this thread.

I suspect it's because the latest comic (juxtaposition, lolololol) has stirred something deep inside them, otherwise would they go to XKCD sucks?

They're not trying to justify XKCD to us, they're trying to justify it to themselves.

September 4, 2010 12:59 PM Rob said...

that's usually why people feel compelled to comment on criticisms of their favorite things--it stirs up some level of insecurity in them. --------------

Well that's nice. When some of the cuddlefish come up with a coherent argument which wasn't rebutted in the FAQ the enlightened XKCD hater chooses to clap his hands over his ears and whistle. Targeting the cuddlefish themselves rather than their arguments.

Then he's encouraged in his fallacy by a significant contributor to the blog. While such inane responses from an "anonymous" are acceptable I think rob that you should really hold yourself to a little higher standard than that.

OT I think most of my sentiments have been expressed by others like Stephen. However I will say that in my opinion making a punchline of the rather bulky "I've redirected the shuttle..." line would weaken the strip. Just because the phrase contains most of what satirical weight exists in the strip doesn't mean it has to be the punchline if you read the comic from a perspective other than "This is an attempt at serious satire".Moving "Damnit Frank" to the alt-text would merely relegate a short sweet punchline to the sideline.

Timofei: I think we need to work that expression into the English language. Good substitute for the honestly bland "fucked it up". "Oh, fuck, sorry-- I really caked it there."

Another valkyrie post that agrees vehemently with our position on two points: that XKCD is the dumbest thing ever (thanks for the ambiguity), and thinks there is something fundamentally wrong with every other poster here. One step closer to being an integral column of the community!

My in-browser dictionary has become a Heathen; it demands I capitalize "Valkyrie". Suggestions for XKCD: RECD, KCAL, and EXCEED.

Hah, I love your blog. Not to say I agree 100% of the time, and not to say I don't even enjoy XKCD. I know that might seem paradoxical to you, but I'm sure it applies to the majority of your audience (and all the happy members of your audience). I also find it funny that you put more/better thought into XKCD that the author. Keep up the good work.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Divided into two convenient categories, based on whether you think this website

Rob's Rants

When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.